Online Privacy Doesn’t Exist Anymore
Earlier today my friend called to tell me about a new Snapchat feature. She was trying to share a memory, which is nothing new for the app, as a photo from a few years ago had popped up and she wanted to reminisce. Nothing out of the ordinary here, however when she took a screenshot of the memory, the other person in the photo got a notification that she was screen-shotting the image. She never sent this person the photo, nor were they tagged in the photo in any way. This is not someone she regularly communicates with, and until this morning she was under the impression she had blocked their account. So how was Snapchat able to identify the other person in the photo, and send a notification to a blocked account?
Maybe this was just a weird fluke, a glitch in the programming, but this sounded far too exact to be a coincidence.
It’sno secret that our phones and social media are tracking us. Be that through targeted ads or other algorithms, our devices know everything about us. Countless social media platforms are being sued for stealing user’s private information. None of this is new information, but it seems almost as if since we’ve started calling them out on this that the problem has gotten even worse.
I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts that my parents run a software company, so I’m no stranger to technology. Growing up, I used my tech solely for my education — to do homework and studying, it was harmless. But now every time I update my phone to the newest IOS software, I’m flooded with notifications to turn off certain features that Apple and other companies can use to track me. These are all automatically turned on when the device is updated, and the individual user has to go through the system preferences to turn them off. In the most recent update the journal app was automatically installed on all iPhones, and the tracking feature turned on until the user went in and disabled it.
Our devices have always been tracking us, but now companies are getting sneaky about it. I’ve had an iPhone and an Apple computer for years, and never once have I been notified about these tracking features. I always hear about them on social media, or from someone at my parents’ company warning everyone on the company phone plan.
This invasion of privacy is scary, and many people aren’t aware that it’s happening to them. Social media and tech use openes the doors for all kinds of issues like cyberstalking, identity theft, and many other problems like this. Users that aren’t familiar with all the features are at such a high risk of mining out their personal information. Children are especially susceptible to this as they have no idea of how truly vast the internet is, and don’t know what is and is not appropriate to be sharing online.
The US Government is again talking about banning Tiktok for this exact reason. And while that might be a step in the right direction, there’s so many bigger issues that need to be addressed in the realm of internet privacy before we start to ban individual apps.
